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My Reading in 2016 and Goals for 2017

So this is kind of a little late compared to when I normally post this sort of thing but it’s still the first week of January so let’s go with it.

My reading in 2016 was a bit of a mixed bag. I started very strong, reading 4-6 books each month but towards the end of the year I couldn’t really get into any book I was picking up and I started a new job so I had to figure out my new day-to-day work/life balance.

Still, I read some great books in 2016 and you can check out my ten favourite books here.

I had some reading goals for 2016, some I completed and some I didn’t. I surpassed my target of reading 40 books and I in fact read 58 so I was very happy with that and I reviewed 34 of those books, beating my target of 26 reviews.

I signed up to the Bookish Bingo Challenge hosted by The Girly Geek at the start of the year and while I enjoyed the challenge I only completed 24 of the 35 squares. That’s still over half and to be honest, I didn’t really base my reading around the challenge, I read what I liked and then had a look at the bingo card every now and then to see if anything fit on a square. I don’t think I’ll be signing up for any challenges like that this year, but I will be starting the Read the World Project – a wonderful challenge you can find more about here.

My final challenge was to finish 2016 with just 50 unread books on my shelves. That didn’t happen. But I did end 2016 with less unread books than I started with! I started 2016 with 93 unread books and I ended 2016 with 87 unread books – so baby steps!

Now this wasn’t particularly a goal but I did keep track of who was writing the books I was reading as I was interested to see is I read more books by men or women. As you can see by this handy chart, I actually read more books by women in 2016 (just!) which was nice and I’d like to continue to have a roughly even split between male and female authors in 2017.

You can check out all the books I read in 2016 here.

Now for my reading goals in 2017!

I’m going to set my Goodreads goal at 50 books but I’m not going to stress about it too much. As an added incentive to read this year, I’m going to borrow Aoife’s idea and put £1 in a jar for every book I read. Then at the end of the year I could have a little bonus that I can put towards whatever I wish – probably more books! Though saying that, I’m going to try and give myself a book buying ban as I really want to lessen my physical TBR.

For every book finished, put €1 in the jar. How many do you think will be there by the end of the year? pic.twitter.com/D8yX5NptJV

So to help me try and lessen my TBR I’ll again try to end the year with 50 unread books on my shelves or less. I’ll also clear out my bookshelves more often if I know I’m never going to read or reread a book so I’ll take more to charity shops or host giveaways or whatever.

And finally there’s the Read the World Project which isn’t just for 2017 but for the next five years! This does kind of work against my whole book-buying thing as I will need to get more books that are set in and by authors from various countries but I’m sure I’ll figure something out.

So those are my reading goals for 2017! Have you set yourself any goals for the year? This year I didn’t want to give myself too much pressure so I hope I can find and read many books that I enjoy.